The girl in the arena: My niece's first Arenacross race

The gate drops and they take off. Gabbi falls in the first corner and struggles to get up in the slippery mud. As she fights to get over the first obstacle, the fastest girl is coming around the last corner nearing the end of her first lap. It doesn't occur to Gabbi that the other girls are struggling just as much as she is on different parts of the track.

This is ArenaCross in the rain at a venue more likely to host rodeos and livestock shows, nestled between the Selkirk and Cabinet Mountains in the panhandle of Idaho. The stands are more than half full. As Gabbi battles to get traction coming up the takeoff for the triple, the crowd cheers her on. The knobs on her 10-inch tires have pushed the bike as far as they can and the flagger at the top pulls her the rest of the way up and over. The crowd goes wild.

She finishes last. Despite her many triumphs, picking the bike up every time she fell, Gabbi is disappointed in her race. I yell, "Great job!" as she rides by and then I line up for my first ArenaCross race.

Nurturing the spark of interest

About four months prior, I decided to get Gabbi the TT-R50 for her birthday. She had shown interest in motorsports, particularly motorcycles that can go where mountain bikes go. When I told her about dirt bikes, her face lit up. I started showing her clips of Supercross to further gauge her interest, but I was already convinced she would love it. Gabbi isn't afraid to try new things, and she is very persistent. I take her mountain biking with me and anytime we go somewhere new, she'll ask me what's the hardest trail I've ridden on the mountain. She wants to go there.

After her first ArenaCross moto, Gabbi parks her TT-R50 out of the rain and joins her Aunt Andrea in the stands to watch the next race. Andrea and I had temporary guardianship of Gabbi and her younger sister for seven months when they were younger. Gabbi and Andrea bonded on a level few aunts get to experience. Andrea is so proud of her bravery and tells her she did great. Gabbi is discouraged because she fell so many times. But then Andrea tells her all the girls were falling and it helps a little. When the 250 Junior race starts, she sees for herself how many times they fall. She is almost convinced. The track conditions are as slick as can be and the ruts are at least axle-deep on the 250s, making them feel more like crevasses for the TT-R50.

Finally, it's my turn to race in the 250 beginner class. I fistbump a younger rider and say, "Let's have fun." The gate drops and nobody is really racing for the holeshot. The first couple of riders go down in the same corner as Gabbi. I drop my bike not long after that. The rest of the race is a competition to see who can stay upright, and I manage to finish fourth or fifth.

This is not a particularly competitive event. The track was built and the race was organized by a privateer racer turned race organizer named Seth Lukesic. His company, MtnMotoCo, helps build and repair race bikes and aims to nurture growth of the motorsports industry and support local athletes by organizing these races. While it isn't an AMA-sanctioned event, they managed to raise a $10,000 purse for the Pro racers.

I talked to Seth to learn more about his background. He's been an avid rider for more than 20 years and says he has been obsessed with racing since day one. He's raced as an amatuer and professional in several formats including motocross, enduro, hare scrambles, and GPs. In 2013, Seth managed a local MX track until it was sold, and then he opened his first shop and began working for several race promoters around the Northwest. In 2017, he decided to start organizing his own races. They've grown exponentially since and new faces continue to show up to the events, including people who are new to dirt bike racing. That's the case for Gabbi and me.

After my race, Gabbi is there waiting and yells, "Even you fell, Uncle Kyle!" Seeing other racers and even Uncle Kyle fall makes her realize how tough the conditions are. She feels better about her first race and is reignited and ready for the next one.

In Gabbi's second moto, I'm so focused on her struggles that I lose track of where the other riders are in comparison to her, and I think she does, too. She manages to pick up her bike every time she falls, and when she comes across the line at the checkered flag, she has finished third out of four. She made the podium in her first ArenaCross race because she never quit.

Much like Teddy Roosevelt, whose famous "the man in the arena" speech, formally titled "Citizenship in a Republic," is still widely quoted more than a century later, I believe it is not the critic who counts. Perhaps, in order to bring it into this century, that sentiment should be extended to the critic in your own head. Gabbi struggled not just with the difficult external conditions but with her inner dialogue telling her she wasn't good enough. Despite that thought living rent-free in her head, she kept getting back on her bike and did what she set out to do.

A fire that lasts

Creating experiences like Gabbi's is part of what Seth hopes to accomplish with these events.

"That's the beauty of racing," Seth said. "There is something for everyone. Whether it's family-friendly entertainment, a kid being active and learning life lessons while having fun, or the pros who are trying to pay their bills by way of riding their motorcycles and giving kids something positive to look up to. We at MtnMotoCo want to leave dirt bike racing at a better place when we're done. We strive to give friends and families memories they'll talk about for years to come and relationships that will last a lifetime."

I'd say Seth and his team are doing a pretty good job. There simply needs to be more Gabbis in the Arena.